Newsletter

Iraqi refugees find new home in Savannah

As the violence in their hometown continued to escalate, Ali and Marrium Nidaer took sanctuary inside their house, leaving it only if it was absolutely necessary.

Eventually it became too much for the Baghdad, Iraq, couple to take. By 2005, two years into the U.S. campaign that removed longtime dictator Saddam Hussein from power before taking the fight to insurgent militias, the Nidaers had seen enough. They decided to flee Iraq — their home for more than 50 years — for Amman, Jordan, leaving behind everything they owned.

“It became chaos,” Ali Nidaer said. “The militias, they were controlling areas (of Baghdad). They were very violent; after (some incidents) people advised us to the leave the country.

“We were just looking for a ... safe life.”

Seven years later Ali Nidaer, 67, and Marrium Nidaer, 60, hope they’ve found that as they settle into Savannah, where they joined their adult son in December after the U.S. government granted them refugee status.

Finding a new life

Struggling to make ends meet was nothing unusual for Ali Nidaer. For more than two decades he worked as an engineer in Hussein’s government, but even with an education and an important job his family often lived on the equivalent of about $100 a month.

“When the U.N. put embargoes and sanctions on Iraq (in 1990), (Hussein) put the struggles on his people,” Ali Nidaer said. “For us, as a large (six-person) family it was hard to make (a) life that way.”

Nidaer doesn’t question his decision to leave Iraq — a country he probably won’t see again — but his family found life wasn’t drastically easier elsewhere.

While his four children left for the U.S., Nidaer found it hard to get work in Jordan.

Eventually he was offered employment, but it would mean entering a situation similar to what drove him out of Iraq.

“In 2007, I went to Afghanistan to work for a construction (company) on a (U.S.) base,” he said. “It seemed the only opportunity there was, so I left (Marrium) in Jordan and started working in Afghanistan for months at a time.”

It wasn’t an easy decision, but Nidaer said knowing his family was out of harm’s way was settling, even if his wife constantly feared for his safety.

On the base, Ali Nidaer said, he was out of harm’s way. He enjoyed the work, and he especially enjoyed being around the American workers and soldiers.

“It helped me to see that if I wanted to give us a good life, we wanted to be in America,” he said. “It allowed me to know that we wanted to come here.”

Gaining refugee status

The Nidaers are the first family of refugees to be relocated to Savannah with the assistance of the Lutheran Services of Georgia since the nonprofit returned refugee assistance to the city in 2012, said Deidre Harrison, the program’s local project manager.

This year, she added, the program plans to help about 100 refugees resettle in the area.

The majority will have different backgrounds than the Nidaers.

“Most of the refugees we’ll be helping and bringing into Savannah, they’re going to be people who do not speak much English, who do not have much education, they’re people who have spent much of their lives living in actual refugee camps,” Harrison said. “So, in (the Nidaers’) case it’s a lot different because they speak English, and they’re well educated and have familiarity with the culture.

“For me it’s a great place to start. I feel like not only are we helping them out, but I think they’re helping us as we move forward with this program.”

Ali Nidaer said he first applied for refugee status in 2009 because he and his wife hoped to join their children living in the U.S. but had no other means of gaining entry into the country.

It was, in fact, his work on the U.S. base in Afghanistan that proved most important in gaining refugee status.

“It’s a huge help when (refugees) have a tie to the area, such as in this case they have their son (in Savannah) and they are living with him,” Harrison said. “And, probably even more importantly, anytime someone has assisted the U.S. that’s going to be very beneficial to gaining refugee status, too.”

‘A new start’

Ali and Marrium Nidaer fully believe coming to the U.S. was the best decision for them. Three weeks into their new life, Ali said, they’ve felt a sense of peace that had been missing for decades.

Back home, Iraq will likely never recover, he said.

“This, of course, is only (my) opinion, but Iraq — it has destroyed itself,” Ali Nidaer said. “The government, it is not good, they do not care for their people, only about themselves as (politicians).”

He believes the U.S. military didn’t finish the mission, but he doesn’t blame it for leaving.

“I don’t think there’s (anything that) can be done,” he said. “What more could (the U.S.) do? The people running (Iraq) don’t care. You can’t do anything with these people.”

Their first-hand experience with constant violence — a reality that continues in Iraq, Nidaer said, even after the U.S. left — has emotionally scarred the family. Ali Nidaer said he knows he is much safer living in Savannah, still he often fears the people around him, especially in light of attacks in the U.S. on Muslim people.

He asked that he and his wife not be photographed because he “doesn’t want any problems with people — some may not like us because we’re Iraqi or because we’re Muslim.”

They plan to largely keep to themselves in their new hometown, at least for now.

“You have trouble trusting people, I think, when you’ve had some issues,” Ali Nidaer said. “The people here seem good.

“We like (Savannah). It’s quiet. I like the trees and the ocean and the river. It’s very different, but it’s a new start — even at my age.”

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP BUTLER, Okinawa, Japan — Marine Corps Captain James E. Frederick, who ejected from a Marine F/A-18 on Dec. 7, was pronounced dead after his body was found during search and rescue operations.